GUELPH — When three-year-old Hannah Brown visited Santa a few weeks before Christmas, like many girls her age, she knew exactly what she wanted.

But she didn’t ask for a doll or a game or anything else that girls her age might want: she asked Santa for a portable toilet.

“She’s not the typical, average little girl who chooses average things,” said her mother, Emma Palmer, 27, pointing out that Hannah wanted to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween.

“She knows what she wants,” added her father, Adrian Brown, 28.

After the laughter subsided, Palmer and Brown set out to see just how hard it would be to make Hannah’s Christmas wish come true. Palmer began making phone calls to several portable toilet renters in Cambridge, Kitchener and Guelph.

Phone call after phone call, Palmer began to lose faith that she and her husband would be able to afford such an unusual gift. She called 12 different companies, and each one told her they couldn’t help her.

She and Brown tried to give Hannah other ideas for Christmas gifts, but she kept repeating her first wish.

Palmer and Brown said they knew Hannah would be disappointed if she didn’t receive the portable toilet on Christmas Day.

“This was the first year that it really resonated that, ‘Oh, Santa’s coming to the house and we’ve got to put cookies out,’ ” said Brown.

“We didn’t want anything to not happen.”

About a week before Christmas, Palmer reached Dan Grenier, at Porta Plus Portables, a local business that rents portable toilets.

“I think it was the oddest request we’ve had,” said Grenier. “At first, I thought it was friends playing a joke on me.”

Palmer says Grenier laughed hysterically when she made her request, but soon told her not to worry about the cost and that they would work something out within their budget.

On Christmas Eve, Grenier — who Palmer, Brown and Hannah affectionately refer to as Santa Dan — delivered the portable toilet to their driveway while Hannah was at her grandparents’ house. He even helped to tarp it and hide it in a corner so she wouldn’t see.

“He went above and beyond, it was beautiful,” said Palmer.

On Christmas morning, Hannah opened all her presents, and noticed something was missing.

“The first thing she said was, ‘I didn’t get my Porta Potty,’ and she was devastated,” said Palmer. Hannah began to wonder if she had made it on Santa’s “Naughty or Nice” list.

So, Palmer and Brown took her out into the driveway where her portable toilet was sitting, complete with a Christmas bow. The look on her face was exactly what they had hoped for.

But it didn’t end there. Grenier left the family a gift bag on the porch. Inside was a card addressed to “Mommy and Daddy” with their money inside, which he told them to put in Hannah’s education fund, as well as a piggy bank shaped like a portable toilet for Hannah.

Palmer was left overwhelmed by his kindness.

“I actually cried,” she said. “He took time away from his family to make it special for us.”

Grenier said he never thought twice about helping the family with its unusual request.

“It was just us helping out a little girl and making her Christmas gift come true,” he said.

He let them keep the toilet until the weekend. Hannah made the most of it, refusing to use the toilet inside the house.

When Grenier came to pick it up, he and Hannah’s parents explained to Hannah that this was one of Santa’s helpers coming to take the toilet back to the North Pole.

“He got involved with it,” said Palmer. “He made sure it was perfectly planned out.”

Palmer and Brown have always told Hannah that it is good to be different and encouraged her uniqueness. But they hope next year’s Christmas wish will be a little bit easier.

“Her birthday is in February, so I’m even more nervous about what her birthday request is going to be,” laughed Palmer.